Chapter XVII: Ruth Begins to Worry

Oakhurst, in the mountains, was a very lovely spot. Besides the hotel where Luke Shepard had worked and where he had met with his accident, there were bungalows and several old-fashioned farmhouses where boarders were received. There was a lake, fine golf links, bridlepaths through the woods, and mountains to climb. It was a popular if quiet resort.

Ruth and Cecile Shepard had rooms in one of the farmhouses, for the hotel was expensive. Besides, the farmer owned a beautifully shaded lawn overlooking the lake and the girls could sit there under the trees while the invalid, as they insisted upon calling Luke, reclined on a swinging cot.

"Believe me!" Cecile often insisted, "I will never send another telegram as long as I live. I cannot forgive myself for making such a mess of it. But then, if I hadn't done so, you would not be here now, Ruthie."

"Isn't that a fact?" agreed her brother. "You are all right, Sis! I am for you, strong."

Ruth laughed. Yet there were worried lines between her eyes.

"It is all right," she murmured. "I might have come in any case--for Mr. Howbridge advised it by this letter that they remailed to me. But I should not have left in such haste, and I should have left somebody besides Mrs. McCall to look after the girls."

"Pooh!" ejaculated Luke. "What is the matter with Agnes?"

"That is just it," laughed Ruth again, but shaking her head too. "It is Agnes, and what she may do, that troubles me more than anything else."

"Goodness me! She is a big girl," declared Cecile. "And she has lots of sense."

"She usually succeeds in hiding her good sense, then," rejoined Ruth. "Of course she can take care of herself. But will she give sufficient attention to the little ones. That is the doubt that troubles me."

"Well, you just can't go away now!" wailed Cecile. "You have got to stay till the doctor says we can move Luke. I can't take him back alone."

"Now, don't make me out so badly off. I am lying here like a poor log because that sawbones and you girls make me. But I know I could get up and play baseball."

"Don't you dare!" cried his sister.

"You would not be so unwise," said Ruth promptly.

"All right. Then you stop worrying, Ruth," the young fellow said. "Otherwise I shall 'take up my bed and walk'--you see! This lying around like an ossified man is a nuisance, and it's absurd, anyway."

Ruth had immediately written to Mr. Howbridge asking him to look closely after family affairs at the Corner House. Had she known the lawyer was not at home when her letter arrived in Milton she certainly would have started back by the very next train.

She wrote Mrs. McCall, too, for exact news. And naturally she poured into her letter to Agnes all the questions and advice of which she could think.

Agnes was too busy when that letter arrived to answer it at all. Things were happening at the old Corner House at that time of which Ruth had never dreamed.

Ruth was really glad to be with Cecile and Luke in the mountains. And she tried to throw off her anxiety.

Luke insisted that his sister and Ruth should go over to the hotel to dance in the evening when he had to go to bed, as the doctor ordered. He had become acquainted with most of the hotel guests before his injury, and the young people liked Luke Shepard.

They welcomed his sister and Ruth as one of themselves, and the two girls had the finest kind of a time. At least, Cecile did, and she said that Ruth might have had, had she not been thinking of the home-folk so much.

Several days passed, and although Ruth heard nothing from home save a brief and hurried note from Agnes, telling of their unsuccessful search for Sammy--and nothing much else--the older Kenway girl began to feel that her anxiety had been unnecessary.

Then came Mrs. McCall's labored letter. The old Scotchwoman was never an easy writer. And her thoughts did not run to the way of clothing facts in readable English. She was plain and blunt. At least a part of her letter immediately made Ruth feel that she was needed at home, and that even her interest in Luke Shepard should not detain her longer at Oakhurst.

* * * * *

"We have got to have another watchdog. Old Tom Jonah is too old; it is my opinion. I mind he is getting deaf, or something, or he wouldn't have let that man come every night and stare in at the window. Faith, he is a nuisance--the man, I mean, Ruth, not the old dog.

"I have spoke to the police officer on the beat; but Mr. Howbridge being out of town I don't know what else to do about that man. And such a foxy looking man as he is!

"Neale O'Neil, who is a good lad, I'm saying, and no worse than other boys of his age for sure, offers to watch by night. But I have not allowed it. He and Aggie talk of Gypsies, and they show me that silver bracelet--a bit barbarous thing that you remember the children had to play with--and say the dark man who comes to the window nights is a Gypsy. I think he is a plain tramp, that is all, my lass.

"Don't let these few lines worry you. Linda goes to bed with the stove poker every night, and Uncle Rufus says he has oiled up your great uncle's old shotgun. But I know that gun has no hammer to it, so I am not afraid of the weapon at all. I just want to make that black-faced man go away from the house and mind his own business. It is a nuisance he is."

* * * * *

"I must go home--oh, I must!" Ruth said to Cecile as soon as she had read this effusion from the old housekeeper. "Just think! A man spying on them--and a Gypsy!"

"Pooh! it can't be anything of importance," scoffed Cecile.

"It must be. Think! I told you about the Gypsy bracelet. There must be more of importance connected with that than we thought."

She had already told Luke and Cecile about the mystery of the silver ornament.

"Why, I thought you had told Mr. Howbridge about it," Cecile said.

"I did not. I really forgot to when the news of Luke's illness came," and Ruth blushed.

"That quite drove everything else out of your head, did it?" laughed the other girl. "But now why let it bother you? Of course Mr. Howbridge will attend to things--"

"But he seems to be away," murmured Ruth. "Evidently Mrs. McCall and Agnes have not been able to reach him. Oh, Cecile! I must really go home."

"Then you will have to come back," declared Cecile Shepard. "I could not possibly travel with Luke alone."

The physician had confided more to the girls than to Luke himself about the young man's physical condition. The medical man feared some spinal trouble if Luke did not remain quiet and lie flat on his back for some time to come.

But the day following Ruth's receipt of Mrs. McCall's anxiety-breeding letter, Dr. Moline agreed to the young man's removal.

"But only in a compartment. You must take the afternoon train on which you can engage a compartment. He must lie at ease all the way. I will take him to the station in my car. And have a car to meet him when you get to the Milton station."

The first of these instructions Ruth was able to follow faithfully. The cost of such a trip was not to be considered. She would not even allow Luke and Cecile to speak about it.

Ruth had her own private bank account, arranged for and supervised, it was true, by Mr. Howbridge, and she prided herself upon doing business in a businesslike way.

Just before they boarded the train at Oakhurst station she telegraphed home that they were coming and for Neale to meet them with the car, late though their arrival would be. If on time, the train would stop at Milton just after midnight.

When that telegram arrived at the old Corner House it failed to make much of a disturbance in the pool of the household existence. And for a very good reason. So much had happened there during the previous few hours that the advent of the King and Queen of England (and this Mrs. McCall herself said) would have created a very small "hooroo."

As for Neale O'Neil's getting out the car and going down to the station to meet Ruth and her friends when they arrived, that seemed to be quite impossible. The coming of the telegram was at an hour when already the Kenway automobile was far away from Milton, and Neale and Agnes in it were having high adventure.